9/06/2004

Spending too much time browsing other blogs...

This letter excerpt, from Timothy Roscoe Carter to Matt Welch at mattwelch.com (linked to from janegalt.net) and dated November 6 2001, efficiently lays out how the Left has prevented itself as a matter of doctrine from doing a single thing about evil states:

"Credibility problems of the Left:
I. Everything the US does is wrong. In a previous column, you asked: What should we do about a repressive regime?

Option 1) Military Aid. Obviously wrong. We are providing the weapons that kill the innocent. See Israel, Turkey, Columbia, Reagan-era Iraq, etc.

Option 2) Economic Aid. Wrong. We are financially propping up the regime. See Egypt, Indonesia, etc.

Option 3) Humanitarian Aid. Still Wrong. By relieving the regime of its financial duty to feed its people, we free up their money for military uses. See Afghanistan, where the US supported the Taliban by providing $43 million in humanitarian aid in exchange for the Taliban not exporting Heroin, thus sacrificing 12 million women to the alter of the failed War on Drugs.

Option 4) Trade / Constructive Engagement. Wrong. This is merely an excuse for US corporations to profit off of the regime's repression of its own people. See China and Reagan-era South Africa.

Option 5) Economic Sanctions. Wrong. The economic sanctions in Iraq have killed 6,000 people a month for the past 11 years, or nearly 800,000 victims of US foreign policy.

Option 6) Military Attack. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! See every military conflict that the United States has every engaged in. (Caveat: There may be a possible exception for the US Civil War, which will be considered obviously justified if you are talking to any white person born in the former Confederacy.)

Option 7) The Prime Directive. Wrong. It is intolerable for the most powerful nation in history to sit by and do nothing while thousands die. It probably stems from a racist lack of concern for people of color of persons of other religions. See Rwanda, Bosnia (not to be confused with Kosovo, which falls under Option 6, above)."

Not much to add to that. In all the years since Iraq invaded Kuwait, I had not heard a single good Leftist solution for the Saddam problem, other than throwing up our hands and letting him do what he wanted without interference.